reflections agin you about
your men wearin' night gowns and braidin' their hair down their backs.
Good land, Si Ann! you and I know what men be. We are married wimmen
and seen trouble. You couldn't stop 'em if you tried to. If Josiah
Allen took it into his head to braid his hair down his back, I should
have to let it go on unless I broke it up sarahuptishly by cuttin' it
off when he wuz asleep, but thank fortin' he hain't got enough so that
the braid would be bigger than a pipe stale anyway if he should let it
grow out, and he is so dressy he wouldn't like that. But I've tried to
break up his wearin' such gay neckties for years and years, and if he
should go out and buy one to-day it would most likely be red and
yaller."

[Illustration: I withdrawed him, bowin' very low and smilin' at
her.--Page 219.]

I felt that China hadn't been used exactly right; I knowed it. Younger
nations--new-comers, as you may say--had made light on her and abused
her, usin' the very type the Chinese had invented to say they didn't
know anything and usin' the gunpowder they had invented to blow 'em up
with. I had felt that the Powers hadn't treated 'em well, and I had
made up my mind some time ago that when I see the Powers I should tell
'em what I thought on't. Then there wuz the opium trade--a burnin'
shame! I wanted to sympathize with her about that, but thought mebby
it wuz best to not harrer up her feelin's any more, so I sez in a real
polite way:

"I have nothin' further to say now, Si Ann, only to bid you adoo and
to tell you that if you ever come to Jonesville be sure and come and
see me; I'll be proud and happy to have you."

Here Josiah had to put in his note: "Good-by, Widder!" sez he. If I
had had time I would have tutored him; he spoke just as he would to
widder Gowdey. I wanted him to act more courtly and formal, but it wuz
too late, it wuz spoke. "Good-by, Widder; we'll have to be a-goin'.
We've had quite a spell of weather, but it looks some like rain now,
and I have a important engagement to-night, and we'll have to be
gittin' hum."

But I gently withdrawed him, bowin' very low myself and lookin'
dretful smilin' at her.

Like all great monarchs, she wanted to make her visitors a present,
and she proposed to send us several drawin's of tea of the kind she
used, and a little hunk of opium, though, as I told her, I should
never use it in the world only to smoke in a pipe for the toothache;
and she also proposed to send